In a sense, any review of William Trevor’s new
collection of short stories is almost superfluous.
After eight previous collections (now handily available
in one volume, The Collected Stories), and
twelve novels, plus two novellas, most people with
more than a passing interest in literary fiction are
probably familiar with his work, and have decided
long ago whether or not they are fans. Given the consistently
high standard of what he has been producing over the
last forty years, if they have any smidgen of taste,
they are. It is unlikely that he is going to start
making false moves now. All that remains, really,
is to encourage those who have not yet sampled the
many delights of his writing to do so without further
delay.
This is his first collection since 1996’s highly
acclaimed After Rain, and contains a dozen
new stories. What is fascinating about Trevor is the
way he can deftly mix the traditional with the modern,
and the personal with the social, what is happening
in broader society with how it impinges on individual
lives. So, ‘Of the Cloth’ brilliantly
examines dwindling church attendances and the loss
of religious authority in Ireland, by recounting an
encounter between a Church of Ireland clergyman and
a Catholic curate, after the funeral of one of the
latter’s parishioners, who worked as a gardener
for the former. It makes reference to the Fr Brendan
Smyth affair, Fr Leahy telling the other man, “It’s
where we’ve ended.”

Similarly, ‘The Mourning’
paints an authentic picture of an Irish navvy’s
experience of prejudice in London, and then works in
the terrorist bomb that exploded prematurely on a bus
in that city a few years back. The hero, Liam Pat Brogan,
suddenly realises that he has been set up to complete
successfully the job that was botched the first time.
He gets off the bus, and throws the bag with the device
off a bridge into The Thames. ‘It was his mourning
of the boy, as he might have mourned himself.’
we are told.
‘Death of a Professor’ is an astute satire
on academic snobbery, while in ‘Three People’
an elderly, ailing father waits for the proposal for
his daughter that will never come, from the man who
once told a lie to save her. ‘But Vera knows,
without her father, they would frighten each other.’
Trevor is great at endings, the killer last paragraph,
and last line.
But it is somewhat arbitrary to select standouts, because
each story, in its own way, is worthwhile. He can convincingly
shift social register to all levels of society, and
with understatement and precision writes of the lonely
and the betrayed. He captures the underlying tensions
between people with a subtlety reminiscent of Chekhov.
Some years ago, John Banville called Trevor ‘The
finest living writer of short stories.’ With his
new book, Trevor is still proving the truth of that
declaration. Trevor is, quite simply, a master. He is
also, therefore, an exemplary practitioner for any younger
writers working in the form.